Gay Marriage Debates vs. Wipeout!

Summer TV is here. So where's the brainless fun? Coverage of the California supreme court's Prop 8 ruling or Wipeout! ? Decisions.

By Dave White

Honestly, if this entire column could be about how great Wipeout! is -- and is there anything not to love about people getting knocked on their ass by low-tech obstacle course punishments in which they're punched, thrown into icy water, and catapulted through the air past stuff that's on fire? -- then I'd be way happier than I am right now. Instead I have to keep on talking about all the knuckleheaded fools parading endlessly across my TV screen telling me about why I don't understand the true nature of marriage and how I shouldn't be allowed to have one.

Since the California supreme court's decision the other day, I've been revisited by that smug little dummy of a beauty queen whose name I've just grown weary of writing, a moronic ex-NFL pastor from a megachurch in San Diego who thinks that his chosen religious beliefs should also be inflicted on me and my husband, even though we don't remember signing up to be members of his congregation, and a Texas congressman who thinks it all has to do with the government's need to police public "morality."

The former NFL guy is named Miles McPherson and he's now a minister in San Diego and getting an unusual amount of career traction thanks to CNN and Larry King, on whose show he debated lesbian comic Carol Leifer. Leifer was boringly polite to him, refusing to tell him that he was being illogical and that his beliefs were fascist, allowing McPherson to just blather about how kids without fathers wind up in jail and that the next step after gay marriage is group marriage and child molestation (in his words, "marrying a minor," like how Jerry Lee Lewis did back in the good old days when gays knew their place and kept their mouths shut about everything). And in spite of there being a professional funny person involved in the debate, the biggest crack-up lines came from Larry King. "Same sex. It stays on board here," he says as a segment opener, and if anyone can figure out what that even means, then please contact me. Later he asked Leifer why gays just didn't leave things as they are. Why keep fighting? Her response was something about how it's a civil rights issue and that time is on our side and blahblahblah. But the real reason is BECAUSE WE'RE BORED NOW THAT THE L WORD IS OFF THE AIR, LARRY.

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Dave White is the author of Exile in Guyville. Find him at www.imdavewhite.com .

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Name: Michael
Date posted: 5/29/2009 10:04:00 PM
Hometown: Seattle

Comment:
Now Now, anyone who's watched "for the bible tells me so" knows that if anything Larry King is pro-gay marriage. Sure he may have let religious groups distort the truth. But as a Journalist he must have both sides of the story, even if one is wrong. I think its great that the gay community is so fired up. But I'm SOOOO tired of them slamming people who don't shout I LOVE GAY PEOPLE!
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Name: Laurent
Date posted: 5/29/2009 7:00:00 PM
Hometown: Ottawa, Canada

Comment:
The idea of Larry King any discussion about traditional marriage gives me the willies, he has been married 7 or 8 times, he was what 75 at his last marriage and 79 for the birth of his last child, and this is what they want to protect. He never has a fair balance on issues and yet every once in a while surprises everybody with his position on issues. On the View, Joy is not the only liberal, what I am always surprised at is how they do not check their facts, Elizabeth makes them up and the ladies let her, they are either misinformed or are just plain ignorant. During their discussions on Prop 8, they kept letting Elizabeth and Sherri get away with saying that churches would have to allow gay weddings or lose their tax exemptions based on a church in MA that lost its exemption on a private park sperate from the church that denied equal access. Elizabeth claimed it was the church that lots its tax status, not the fact that it was public church owned land seperate from the church.

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